US States as List of SelectListItems in .NET

FWIW – Needed this list once, and only found many prepared html select/option lists – so I have created this and posting here future reference.

In this example, creating a dynamic ViewBag object ‘ViewBag.States’, and adding a bunch of SelectListItems as properties.

 ViewBag.States = new List<SelectListItem>
               {
                	new SelectListItem { Text ="AK" },
	                new SelectListItem { Text ="AL" },
	                new SelectListItem { Text ="AR" },
	                new SelectListItem { Text ="AZ" },
	                new SelectListItem { Text ="CA" },
	                new SelectListItem { Text ="CO" },
	                new SelectListItem { Text ="CT" },
	                new SelectListItem { Text ="DC" },
	                new SelectListItem { Text ="DE" },
	                new SelectListItem { Text ="FL" },
	                new SelectListItem { Text ="GA" },
	                new SelectListItem { Text ="HI" },
	                new SelectListItem { Text ="IA" },
	                new SelectListItem { Text ="ID" },
	                new SelectListItem { Text ="IL" },
	                new SelectListItem { Text ="IN" },
	                new SelectListItem { Text ="KS" },
	                new SelectListItem { Text ="KY" },
	                new SelectListItem { Text ="LA" },
	                new SelectListItem { Text ="MA" },
	                new SelectListItem { Text ="MD" },
	                new SelectListItem { Text ="ME" },
	                new SelectListItem { Text ="MI" },
	                new SelectListItem { Text ="MN" },
	                new SelectListItem { Text ="MO" },
	                new SelectListItem { Text ="MS" },
	                new SelectListItem { Text ="MT" },
	                new SelectListItem { Text ="NC" },
	                new SelectListItem { Text ="ND" },
	                new SelectListItem { Text ="NE" },
	                new SelectListItem { Text ="NH" },
	                new SelectListItem { Text ="NJ" },
	                new SelectListItem { Text ="NM" },
	                new SelectListItem { Text ="NV" },
	                new SelectListItem { Text ="NY" },
	                new SelectListItem { Text ="OH" },
	                new SelectListItem { Text ="OK" },
	                new SelectListItem { Text ="OR" },
	                new SelectListItem { Text ="PA" },
	                new SelectListItem { Text ="RI" },
	                new SelectListItem { Text ="SC" },
	                new SelectListItem { Text ="SD" },
	                new SelectListItem { Text ="TN" },
	                new SelectListItem { Text ="TX" },
	                new SelectListItem { Text ="UT" },
	                new SelectListItem { Text ="VA" },
	                new SelectListItem { Text ="VT" },
	                new SelectListItem { Text ="WA" },
	                new SelectListItem { Text ="WI" },
	                new SelectListItem { Text ="WV" },
	                new SelectListItem { Text ="WY" },
              };